Have reporters written off single-payer system?
American Journal of Nursing’s Jacob Molyneux writes about the nurses who were arrested while protesting a lack of representation for those who support a single-payer health care system at a Senate Finance Committee meeting about health care reform.
In his blog post, Molyneux points out that some people and organizations say the press isn’t giving adequate coverage to the single-payer option.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) published a media advisory in March that said out of “hundreds” of news stories, only 18 mentioned the single-payer option. FAIR’s advisory fails to tell us exactly how many “hundreds” of stories it searched and the full study doesn’t appear to be on the organization’s Web site.
The “Report on Health Care Community Discussions” on HealthReform.gov says that 27 percent of the groups participating “discussed the merits of a single-payer system, and the majority of those groups supported this idea.” The report does note that “Supporters of a single-payer system submitted numerous reports, in part due to the encouragement by advocacy groups to participate in Health Care Community Discussions.”
At a town-hall meeting last week, President Obama said “if he were building the health care system from scratch, a single-payer system would be the best approach.”
So, health journalists: Have you been reporting on the single-payer option? Why or why not? Feel free to point out coverage you find worthwhile.
Comments
One Comment on Have reporters written off single-payer system?
-
Oprah is Not Your Doctor and Much, Much More | Our Bodies Our Blog on
Tue, 19th May 2009 3:39 AM
[...] Meanwhile, centrist Democrats have raised concerns with House leaders over a health reform bill that includes a public insurance plan that competes with the private insurance market … Hospitals and insurance companies want to reduce the growth of health care spending, but not like that … James Ridgeway wrote earlier in the week at Mother Jones that “the underlying purpose of this PR stunt is to slow or block any meaningful health care reforms, which could actually improve care while reducing the price tag by a lot more than 1.5 percent.” … The Washington Post deconstructs the White House email on health care reform … And Covering Health, the blog of the Association of Healthcare Journalists, asks: Have reporters written off single-payer system? [...]
Please read our blog commenting policies.
-
Spend a week at the CDC studying public health, meeting sources. Apply for the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships today!
- Reporting on the intersection of health, environment
- Tip sheet: Covering cuts to Medicare reimbursements
- Briefing: Reporting on health reform between now and 2014
- Covering high-risk insurance pools: Tips for reporters
- Health care reform has passed: What's next?
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
